Night Of Knives

Chapter 20

"These are expensive," Jacob says, looking at the two iPod-sized lozenges of black metal on the desk in his study, sitting beside a metal box as big as a toaster that bristles with electronic apparati and LCD screens. "The GPS trackers are five hundred US each. If I don't get them back inside a week I'll have to pay for them myself. And the spectrum analyzer's more like ten thousand. That's like half my annual salary here."

"If we get the evidence, those most high will cover your expenses, I promise," Prester says. "They've got plenty of black-book discretionary slush funds."

"Why don't we just go to the embassy now?" Veronica asks. "We must have enough to convince them something's going on. They'll listen to all three of us."

Prester shrugs. "I doubt it. Take it from me, put not your faith in the American intelligence services. They're not much sharper than any other batch of bureaucrats, and they're already half-convinced I'm the bad guy. But even if they do listen, then what? We don't even have a name. All we know is Derek got set up by somebody in the chain of command. If they find out we're poking around, they'll pull the plug, and poof, we got nothing but conspiracy theories and a cheese omelette on our face. We need names, dates, pictures, verifiable evidence. With any luck these little toys will help get us that tonight. Without … well, there's always plan B. Your ex."

Veronica frowns. She doesn't want to crash Danton's hotel and start demanding answers. She came to Africa to get away from her ex-husband and everything he represents. She doesn't want to see him ever again, not unless and until she has the advantage. She can't even really imagine what that would be like. Danton always has the advantage. That's what it means to be rich.

"Shouldn't be necessary," Prester says reassuringly, reading her face. He seems more cheerful today, and more rested. "Tonight should be plenty. Even if we can't plant these trackers, your amazing little number harvester should be highly helpful."

"It's not just a number harvester," Jacob objects. "It's a full-feature GSM spectrum analyzer. Practically a mobile base station. And it doesn't actually register cell-phone numbers. Just handset and SIM card IDs, and signal strength. We can only get the numbers of Mango phones."

"Mango or Celtel or MTC."

"Celtel and MTC are whole other companies. I don't have any access to their database."

"Celtel is minority owned by a CIA front," Prester says casually. "And we got an MTC engineer on our payroll too. There's a reason Derek recruited you to work at Telecom Uganda. Same reason we both got Mango phones once he started getting suspicious. It's the only cell company here we hadn't wormed our way into yet."

Jacob stares at him.

"More things under heaven and earth, son." Prester is considerably shorter than Jacob, and Veronica doubts he is more than five or ten years older, but right now the diminutive seems appropriate. "You're playing in the big leagues now. So don't get sloppy. Now what's the range on your precious spectrum analyzer?"

"Maybe a hundred metres."

"OK. Should be ample. You've only got two GPS trackers?"

"That's all I could manage."

Prester frowns. "Well, we'll make do. With luck whoever's smuggling these Zanzibar Sams won't have more than two vehicles. Strong magnets on these, right? All I have to do is put them somewhere on the chassis and they'll stay there, even on bumpy African roads?"

"Not a problem."

"They text their coordinates how often?"

"It's configurable. Right now every ten minutes."